Mapping the Territory: Exploring People and Nature, 1700-1830

Closing conference of the SNF-Project: Cultures of Natural History: Main Actors, Networks and
Places of Scientific Communication in the Early-Modern Period
University of Berne 21st to 23rd September 2017
Opening conference of the project: Global natural history around 1800: collections, media and
pedagogy
University of Gttingen, 7th - 9th December 2017
In the early eighteenth-century the physician and naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchzer published in
Zurich a bibliography of all books on natural history that he knew about. His catalogue contained
publications on Europe, Africa, Asia and America. Scheuchzers idea was to combine the different
local natural histories into a natural history of the world. His contribution to this global natural
history was his research about the Alps and their fauna, flora, minerals and about the homo
alpinus helveticus.
Half a century later, the Physical Society of Zurich, inspired by similar projects undertaken
elsewhere, conducted surveys of the citys subject territory. Likewise, inspired by reports from
travels to hitherto unknown regions and news about the exploration of faraway territories,
diverse actors both with and without academic training all over Europe became increasingly
interested in their surroundings. Drawing on travelogues and questionnaires of local and colonial
actors as well as on their own observations, early-modern natural historians collected information
about both nature and people inhabiting these territories, which helped to turn them into distinct
spaces.
The later decades of the 18th century became an important era for the development of different
fields of natural history and related fields of ethnology and archaeology as academic subjects due
to the advancement of Linnaean systematics in botany and zoology. These caused paradigmatic
changes in the perception, systematization and classification of the natural world. Collections and
the practices of collecting played a major role in this process and influenced the global exchange
of ideas, knowledge, specimens and personnel. Material as well as intellectual exchange
happened in diverse institutions that also included collections, media, the university classroom
and the natural world itself. At the same time European exploration and colonialism influenced
and was influenced by these developments too.

The conferences aims to analyse the exploration of the different local natures (natural history)
and the discovery of local inhabitants and their history (ethnography and antiquarianism) from
a comparative perspective in a period marked by an increase in scientific travels and expeditions
around the world. It also wants to question the periodization of this discovery of the
indigenous. To do so, the conferences will bring together historians of natural history, ethnology
and archaeology, from Europe and outside, engaged in studying sources generated in different
political contexts (republics, monarchies, colonial rule etc.).
Based on the findings of historians, with particular emphasis on the social and cultural practices of
early-modern natural history, the conferences will focus on collecting and exchanging, measuring
and classifying information on territories and institutions of different scope. Thus, we are
interested in discussing how the various researches and explorations enabled the production of
new forms of knowledge of nature and of people.
We invite presentations on issues such as Mapping Nature and Mapping People, including but
not limited to the following themes:
-

Media, methods and tools used to collect and communicate information, for example
maps, statistics, local floras as well as objects
areas of interest concerning the natural world, e.g. minerals, flora and fauna, and/or
demography, local peoples lifestyle, customs and history within a certain territory
actors involved, and their specific interests, opportunities and resources, e.g. learned as
well as amateurs curiosity; the role of individual or public actors in this process
concepts of the relationship of man and nature
the universalisation of locally generated knowledge

We welcome contributions from early-career as well as established scholars and we particularly

encourage applications from researchers working on areas outside Europe. Travel and hotel
expenses will be refunded.
If you wish to present a contribution, please send an abstract of your proposed paper in English or
German (max. 250 words) and a short CV to Simona Boscani Leoni: simona.boscani@hist.unibe.ch
and Dominik Hnniger: dominik.huenniger@zvw.uni-goettingen.de
Submission deadline: 20 January 2017